…Happy new solar year everyone, hope it’s a great one filled with many awesome things! Enjoying my last hours of calm before the madness of 2013 starts up again 🙂…

…writings. One of the things that drove this home for me was seeing the statistics compiled by Martin Lewis for the Clarke Award (among the highlights: around 90% of the books had at least a male protagonist, a good quarter featured no women main characters at all, and a good 81% of the books had the protagonist kill someone, while only under half the protagonists were in a stable happy relationship). Dream of Red Mansions, meanwhile, a novel that…

…ing in the inaugural edition of Orbs, L’Autre Planète, a cross between a bound book and a magazine (“beau-livre magazine” as they say in French). Many thanks to Maxence Layet and Nathalie Barneix and the rest of the Orbs team for the opportunity and the translation–it’s always fascinating to see the process of translation into another language you speak, and this was no exception. Also, I have seen the galleys, and it all looks quite gorgeous. Loo…

…Very very honoured that “Immersion” has been shortlisted for a BSFA Award for Best Short Fiction–and also very very happy to see Rochita Loenen-Ruiz’s “Song of the Body Cartographer” is also on the shortlist, as well as a number of familar names 🙂 My deepest thanks to everyone who nominated it, and good luck to everyone! Full list here….

…y‘s “The Waiting Stars”. Tentatively titled “The Weight of a Blessing”, around 6000 words long. On her third visit to Sarah–on the last occasion that she sees her daughter, even if it is only in V-space– Minh Ha says nothing. There are no words left, no message of comfort that she could give her. Instead, she takes Sarah’s hand, holds it tight until the last of the warmth has leeched from her body into her daughter’s–and braces herself for the fut…

…Been remiss in blogging lately, but please go congratulate good friend T.L. Morganfield on selling her Toltec novel The Bone Flower Throne to Dario Ciriello’s Panverse Publishing. While you’re at it, you can pick up her short fiction collection Night Bird Soaring and Other Stories on amazon (including the title story, which was shortlisted for the Sidewise Award)….

…Western Anglophone writers and the rest of the world. The World SF Travel Fund aims to bridge some of that gap by enabling more non-Anglo writers to come to major Anglo cons. The first recipient was Charles Tan from the Philippines, who travelled to the US for World Fantasy Con, and in 2012 the Fund helped Swedish authors Nene Ormes and Karin Tidbeck travel to Toronto for the same convention. If you’d like to contribute to this effort, please go d…

…1.5L of water, half an onion, 1 knob of ginger, a good teaspoon of five-spice powder, a good tablespoon of instant chicken broth powder, a LOOOT of fish sauce (1 or 2 tablespoons), a 1-inch piece of kombu, 8 shrimp with their shells, and 3 nests of egg noodles. And a dash of sesame oil before serving. Broth heaven. Yum yum.…

…planet. On the phone, your aunt’s voice is breezy, telling you not to worry–that she’ll find a visa and a plane ticket, that she knows someone who knows someone who can give her a hand with the formalities of the High Commission for Refugees. Behind her, you hear the dull thud of bombs falling like rain on a tin roof–the same sound that swells and roars within your dreams until you wake up in a room that feels deathly silent….

…or the consequences to the culture that gets trampled underfoot. I really do wish more people would reflect on this (and the closing remarks of the column) before they so blithely spoke of colonists seeking adventures in space……